An ecosocialist blog

NHS privatisation

They’re getting jumpy. It looks like Jeremy Hunt is already feeling the pressure of our huge, people-powered opposition to his NHS privatisation plot. The Telegraph is reporting that “an outcry from medical groups, MPs and campaigners against privatisation in the NHS has forced a re-think”. [1]

And that’s hardly surprising – 130,000 of us signed the petition against the changes in just 24 hours. But we haven’t won yet. Over the next few hours, Hunt will be deciding whether or not he can hold out in the face of public outcry. Now we need to ramp up the pressure by making the petition continue to grow fast.

A new fight over NHS privatisation has just begun. Jeremy Hunt is trying to use new powers, hidden within last year’s controversial NHS laws, to force local GPs to privatise more health services. [2] This is one of the things we were afraid might happen – and now our worst fears are being confirmed. We need to do all we can to stop it.

Jeremy Hunt’s new privatisation plot is contained within “NHS competition regulations”. [3] Usually these kinds of rules get quickly rubber-stamped by Parliament. This time, we need to get MPs and Lords to stand up to Hunt and block his plans. [4]

It’s a long shot, but we have a chance of stopping these changes because Hunt is breaking promises made to MPs when NHS laws were voted through last year. [5] If we generate a huge, public outcry to put pressure on the politicians who clung on to those promises last time the government attacked our NHS, we can convince them to stop these new laws.

Hunt’s new regulations (Statutory Instrument 257 under Section 75 of the Health & Social Care Act 2012) are like a catalogue of our worst fears. [6] GPs would have to open up every part of local health services to private companies, whether or not it’s what they or local people want. It would speed up the break up of the NHS, giving profit-hungry companies new rights to muscle in.

Last year, the government promised it wouldn’t go as far as forcing privatisation on local health services. Lots of MPs and Lords said these promises convinced them to vote for the NHS law. Now, we need to go back to these same MPs and Lords, and tell them to find some backbone. If they really voted for the law because of those promises, now they’ve got no excuse not to put a stop to Hunt’s latest privatising move.

All over the country, 38 Degrees members have been working together to convince their local NHS decision makers to do the right thing and limit privatisation in their area. Now, government is trying to take that power away from local doctors and the patients they serve.

This is going to be tough. It could be the start of the second round of the fight to protect everything that’s precious about the NHS. But it’s the right thing to do, because we know that when private companies move in, all too often it doesn’t end well for patients.